An American lawyer working for the World Bank in Kenya, Malakia was eating lunch in Nairobi’s Westgate mall Saturday afternoon when heavily armed militants stormed the shopping center, engulfing patrons in a hail of gunfire. In an interview with NBC News, Malakia describes how she managed to survive the attack and how she escaped after spending five hours huddled in a shop’s back room.

“We’re chatting, and then all of a sudden there’s this explosion,” Malakia told NBC News after returning to the U.S. on Tuesday. “The gentleman who had taken my [old] seat must have gotten shot immediately because he was basically on the floor, on the ground, like dead right next to the chair that I was sitting in.”

As the attack continued, Malakia said she sought refuge in the employee break room of a home goods store in the mall, according to NBC. As she and around a dozen others hid, they could hear gunfire and screaming coming from the floor above them. Amid the chaos, she used someone else’s phone to send a text message to her dad.

“It was terrifying, we all had a very real sense that we were going to die,” Malakia said.